How do people inherit cyclic vomiting syndrome?
In most cases of cyclic vomiting syndrome, affected people have no known history of the disorder in their family. However, many affected individuals have a family history of related conditions, such as migraines, in their mothers and other maternal relatives. This family history suggests an inheritance pattern known as maternal inheritance or mitochondrial inheritance, which applies to genes contained in mitochondrial DNA. Disorders with mitochondrial inheritance can appear in every generation of a family and can affect both males and females. However, because mitochondria can be passed from one generation to the next only through egg cells (not through sperm cells), only females pass mitochondrial conditions to their children.
